Date: Monday , March 08, 2010
Why many of the hi-tech gadgets fail to make a mark? Except a few, all hoard multiple computing features within the small dimension at the cost of user friendliness. More than 30 percent of software development projects are canceled before completion primarily because of inadequate user design input. The economy suffers billion dollar losses due to this, the market research firm Standish Group finds in a recent survey, which implies that there is a huge market for user-centered software designing. Three years back, when the potential of this user-centered market was yet to be realized, the three technocrats Anil Pagar, Mandar Bhagwat, and Jitendra Wase had a clear vision of what awaited the future. They formed SpadeWorx with the objective of developing user-centric software solutions, a move that now helps many biggies like Microsoft and HP to develop rich and interactive solutions.

Founded in 2007, Spadeworx’s focus is to integrate techniques of building rich ‘user experience’ and techniques of software engineering. Anil Pagar, the CEO, is quite confident to set a deep footprint through their unique operational model, which ensures that the human computer interaction (HCI) expert, user experience engineer, usability engineer, and software architect work together to carve out intuitive, interactive, and contextual solutions. Moreover, their strong technology partnerships with companies like Microsoft and Adobe help them use the most relevant technologies and products for their solutions. The career stints of the three founders that span across telecommunication, IT, retail, and manufacturing stand them in good stead to develop solutions for clients in different domains.

The company’s unique approach and expertise have been recognized across the industry, and currently it boasts of a clientele that includes leading Indian organizations such as Reliance, Mahindra Group, and the Reserve Bank of India. Some of the prominent Fortune 100 organizations, like Microsoft and HP, have benefited and are heavily betting on Spadeworx’s solutions. For instance, a development process at a large ISV, which has 6,000 odd employees scattered all across the five continents, was reeling under the pressure to have better productivity. However, they were unable to identify and leverage on the right domain expertise. The company turned towards the user-centric solution of Spadeworx who built interactive intranet software that catered to the specific need. They analyzed the employees and categorized them on the basis of their domain expertise, like electronic engineering or IC design. A professional seeking to leverage his IC design expertise can drag and drop one of the IC design experts in his personal group from the main category menu. Once the subject-matter expert is added to his group, the professional is able to be abreast with the updates of the expert, in terms of blog, articles, or research papers. This helped the professionals in the development center share their expertise with each other and develop better products, leveraging on their commitment and interests.

“Our vision is to meet the user expectations through rich interactions, innovative functionality, and trustworthy computing,” says Mandar Bhagwat, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at SpadeWorx. He has the acumen to understand the technology changes and capitalize on the different market opportunities. His expertise is quite visible in Spadeworx, which currently develops solutions catering to the Intranet, portals, SaaS enablement, social computing for enterprises, rich media solutions, touch (gesture) based interactions, and mobile applications for iPhone, Android, and Windows.

The company, with a small team of 100 employees, is successful in addressing the user-centric needs. The expansion plans are stalled by scarcity of talented resources. “We are on the lookout for people who are not confined to a boxed mindset, rather would like to explore ‘out-of-the-box ideas’, says the CTO. So does that deter them? Bhagvat is quick to nip all such negative assumptions in the bud. “Lack of resource is a drawback, but we have successfully set a global footprint with offices in Seattle, New York, London, Singapore, and Mumbai. The development centers are in Pune and in the tier-III city of Kolhapur. Considering our performance, Nasscom has ranked us among the top 20 fastest emerging IT companies,” he swiftly stitches the success-line. The company’s ingress to provide a better value is not limited to the customers rather to the society at large and their venture into the tier III is a testimony to it.

Gartner’s findings suggest that user-centered methods increase user satisfaction by 40 percent and the user-centered design services is the biggest emerging market. Companies will be on the lookout for a better platform to enhance their user friendliness, and SpadeWorx, with its values intact, has aptly positioned itself to grab the biggest share of the pie.